In the Face of Extinction
by RestlessBlue
Summary: René Taylor was a student at the Art Institute of Dallas before a rogue virus started a massive killing spree. In a matter of days she is one immune person in a very small handful scattered across the metroplex. Zombie-like survivors pick them off and for three years René stares extinction in the face. Based off of the 2007 film.
1. Chapter 1- The Plunge

**This is my first story on here but I have been stalking this website for a while now. I would love to see some critique and general feedback. I'll try to post a new chapter every Saturday if all goes well. Hope you guys like it. :)**

It's been three years since I last saw a human face. I have seen faces, but not human faces. I was staying in an apartment with my friend, Garland, when Dr. Krippin's mutated virus came to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. We were attending The Art Institute of Dallas together, each of us deservedly granted with scholarships. At night we shared our creations. She flaunted her newest high-life chic outfit and I shared my concept art or a freshly sculpted game character.

I loved sculpting my imaginations on a computer screen and she loved drawing cute, daring, or practical outfits and then wearing them but we shared a white hot passion for art. It kept us in the same apartment for two years with only one or two minor arguments. It split our apartment in half; her half of our room was pale pink with black, white and grey accents while my half was white and blue, no exceptions. The bathroom was mine (color-wise), the kitchen and living room were hers. We came to an easy accord after one week amongst the cardboard boxes.

We met in our freshman year of high school- that would be eleven years ago now. Friendship was almost instantaneous and it lasted throughout the first semester, the second semester, summer break, and throughout the following years. Our bond stood unyieldingly against catastrophic break-ups and other trials of the high school life. We spent the holidays together and threw surprise birthday parties in strange places. College plans started in junior year. By that time I had a self portrait from Garland on my wall with her name signed on it and she had a self portrait from me labeled "René". Our artistic passions led and carried us to the Art Institute of Dallas.

But, of course, I still have to get back around to how it ended. Three years ago there was panic in the streets as airborne wildfire spread, killing everyone it met in less than a twenty-four hour day. We saw the news reports about Krippin's virus's mutation and fears that were boiling in the metroplex, so instead of showing off our creations after school we talked about it over creamer and coffee. Soon we had assured ourselves that we could ride it out together despite the hype.

Tomorrow is Saturday. We can skip school with no consequences at all. Stay inside all day and the day after that, we thought. We were very laid back people who didn't really worry about anything, believing that everything would work itself out. If worse comes to worse we can always just roll with the punches. That kind of mentality led us to sleep in that morning, phones silenced and doorbell disconnected, as usual. A simple do not disturb sign just wouldn't cut it. Someone had probably tried to ring the doorbell as evacuations started; knocked on the door, but we were also deep sleepers.

Minutes after we woke up something strange in the air alerted us to the problem. Strangely busy sounds came from outside. As the bedlam got louder, Garland looked out our window to try to see past the other buildings. I peered through the peep hole in our front door and checked the locks regularly. It was apparent that things really had gone wrong. It was stupid to have stayed.

Our nerves, if ropes, would have looked like hairy snakes. So much for laid back. We covered our mouths and noses with some of Garland's scarves after a man on radio reminded us that it was airborne. I can't remember what we were listening to at the time but he must have been from the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control. Military vehicles rolled in to keep order among evacuees and helicopters came in droves for the news or to carry people to safety. Our only major argument came an hour after the virus.

It was just a product of fear and anxiety. If we could have somehow stayed completely calm through it all we never would have argued. Neither of us could decide whether or not to leave or to stay. Both of us doubted ourselves and each other. To go outside in search of a means of evacuation meant risking infection and compromising the safety of our home, however to stay within that safety meant to risk infection in some other way or to risk possible starvation.

In the end we stayed put, afraid for our lives because of Krippin's virus, which boasted 10,009 cured cancer patients. That's what it started as: a cure for cancer. Dr. Alice Krippin reprogrammed the measles virus to target cancer cells but then it mutated into this.

The night was very hectic. Most people had left the apartment building but some had become infected and stayed inside their homes. One, or maybe two, changed. They survived the virus but it took over and so they paced back and forth past all the apartment doors, banging on them and demanding to be let in. They couldn't properly articulate any words at all. What words they tried to form came out like paper through a shredder. It was harsh or gurgling and sometimes they whined and wheezed. When they did that it sounded like they were pleading for help. Then they became aggressive again and pounded on the doors, snarling and hacking.

Someone came to our door after hearing the radio. The radio was supposed to give us something else to try to focus on but it brought it to our door. At least the voice was far too distorted to identify as a neighbor's.

Early the next morning Garland said that she felt nauseous and hot. I took care of her to the best of my ability for several hours but her fever rose and she slipped into delirium. She became irritable and swatted away the wet rag that I desperately tried to cool her with.

Watching her chocolate brown eyes flutter and roll made me sick to my stomach. The whites slowly turned spidery gray, followed by the irises. Her auburn hair was dark and stringy; wet with sweat. Sometimes if I brushed over it too roughly it came out in clumps. As she laid on her bed sweat pooled above her collar bones. Her fair skin was turning grayish and pale. Nothing could save her and I knew but I couldn't help but wonder how she had gotten infected. Why had it taken so long? Why wasn't I infected? Was I just not feeling the effects yet?

It doesn't matter now. She survived the sickness like whoever was outside that night. In the evening Garland sat up and she jerked her head from side to side, surveying the bedroom. She looked at me with absolutely no recognition and growled. The gun was already nearby me so I picked it up and threatened her with it. I told her to calm down and stay on the bed. I really didn't want to shoot her. As you can imagine, shooting your best friend would disagreeable at best. She brought her legs underneath herself, put her hands on the edge of the bed and leaped right for me. The gun went off before I could think about what I was doing. The snarling turned to shrieking as the bullet ripped through her left lung.

The crying started after the fourth shot tolled through the room. After a while (it's impossible for me to tell how long I stayed there) I took what I wanted into the living room and locked the bedroom door behind me. For three days afterward I listened to the city descend into relative silence. At night I heard other people like Garland.

The smell of her decaying corpse that had started spreading through the apartment soon had me packing. I couldn't go get the gun. It was in the bedroom on the floor where I dropped it. I couldn't stand to see that gun, much less to use it again even if it was necessary to save my own life. I had used it to shoot her four times. I watched her blood become speckles on the wall and a soggy red spot on the carpet. I couldn't stand to see Garland now.

I took a large kitchen knife with me, the sharpest I could find, and pulled away the barricade from the front door. I quietly descended the stairs and crossed the parking lot. Very few things moved. I saw no one.

Later I found an empty house that had been for sale in an established neighborhood full of tall trees and prim gardens. I felt wrong breaking into it. When the door finally opened I was met with cool, sad air. Although the aura felt sacrosanct, with the peacefulness of a spirit put to rest, I moved in. By nightfall I had a dozen lit candles throughout the barren house and a peanut butter-honey sandwich for company. As the sound of survivors essentially looting the other houses reached the living room the candles had to be put out one by one, so my sandwich and I were the only ones left.

The air pressure seemed to increase as I thought about what had happened in the past six days. It was now Thursday and Garland was dead. I killed her with four shots from my gun after she got sick and survived. Did I help her? Did my efforts to keep her alive push her to change? We chose to stay and acted like nothing bad could happen. Now everyone is dead as far as I can tell.

It must have started when cancer patients, who had surged into hospitals for the cure, came home. They were cured as it tracked down cancer cells, but then the virus mutated and started killing everything. It spread like the Black Plague on steroids, killing everyone, and firing the shot that started my grueling three year race.


	2. Chapter 2- What Could Have Been

**Writing used to come naturally to me, but now I feel like I have to try too hard to write my thoughts down. If you feel like it, point out anything that should or could be changed. Thanks in advance. Also, suggestions for future chapters are welcome although the story is panning out for me. I plan on having René document everything that happens to her over these three years in what I have come to think of as a nice, thick autobiography. Chapter two!**

Days passed in my new house. My head was swimming in death, making my life a distorted dream. Fantasmal thoughts kept me going while I adjusted to the new quiet, lonely life. I pretended that I was just waiting out a storm or having a lazy weekend, which would be accurate in a way.

A few dogs barked from around the neighborhood and I built off of that. _Maybe I'm not the only person alive. Maybe I'll be okay. Maybe I'm missing something; this can't be right._

It just came so fast, especially because we were so laid back about it. Eventually I scolded myself for being so stupid until I just couldn't take it anymore. Nothing could fix this anyway. So then I thought about what I should do. _I should find food and a bed, or blankets at least; visit the library to get some books._

I thought hard about how long I had been there to find out what day it was. _I lit candles and made a sandwich on Thursday night. I got carpet burn the next morning, Friday morning, on my face. The looters came again one night. Was it Friday or Saturday night?_ Those days blended together because they were the darkest. _The dogs stopped barking one day, after the looters came again, so it must have been Friday. I slept through the night and then laid half asleep on the floor through the next day, Sunday._ Through that night I dozed, sleeping for less than an hour at a time. _Today must be Monday then._

I thought, _I should probably go get some of my stuff from the apartment_, but then I remembered Garland and decided not to. I thought about Garland for a while in a position that had become very familiar. I was in a corner sitting against one wall in the living room. I leaned forward onto my knees and held my ankles.

It was there that I thought that the scarves had something to do with her changing. She made those in a room full of busy people who might have been infected. _We put the scarves over our mouths and noses to protect ourselves from it and now... now she's dead and I'm still here. I must be immune to it. How many others are there?_ To believe, even for a second, that I was the only one was absolutely crazy.

So first of all I had to look for other survivors. The horn in my car should be loud enough to catch someone's attention. I left the house for the first time in days to see a neighborhood that looked largely undisturbed. I wanted the dogs to keep barking and I wanted to see what had happened to them, but with this virus floating around I also didn't want to waste time when other people might be dying.

A tall oak tree stood near my car and another younger tree was growing on the other side of the yard, tied to metal supports. As I checked the rearview mirror I noticed something startling. The front door of the house across the street was wide open. The interior was dark and cavernous looking. I immediately pulled the keys out of the ignition and put the emergency brake on. Leaving the keys on the console, I went to investigate.

A murmuring sound came from inside and then I heard tearing. It sounded kind of like wet packing tape coming off of a box in short bursts. My entrance was silent and whatever or whoever was inside didn't notice me. I peered into the living room and saw two people squatting next to someone else, indirectly illuminated by sunlight coming through drawn curtains.

A spark of hope ignited inside me until I realized what they were doing. One of them was facing me, trying to peel a thick layer of flesh off of the body's back. He pulled at underlying flesh in a dark and bloody wound while the other munched on its hand. I moved like The Flash, back around the corner and out the door.

My legs felt numbed and I almost tripped over myself as I jogged back across the street. I fumbled with the keys and tried very hard to push the image of the two Infected away. The blood streaked body was seared into my memory like a brand from this new life; it wouldn't go away, it just hovered in front of me. Blinking made it worse, like I was again in that dark house.

Desperation drove me on for over three hours. I drove through other neighborhoods and apartment complexes honking the car horn with a knife at the ready. I drove to hospitals, a few hotels, the airport, parked outside, and honked incessantly. I saw the face of a snarling Infected in one of the windows more than once.

As I drove through downtown Dallas a white truck crossed an overpass ahead of me. With no one else on the streets I drove after it like a jittery stunt driver. The effort eventually awarded me with human contact. We parked bumper to bumper beside a parking garage, waving at each other through the glass.

A man in his upper thirties got out of the truck and we each did a cute little speed walk towards each other. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and he was wearing a black jacket with his last name stitched onto it.

"Where have you been?" He asked.

"Searching all of Dallas for you." I shot back excitedly.

"I've been looking for other people since about noon. Yesterday too."

"I just came out of my house. First time in days. It's been... rough. For a little while I thought I'd never see another person again."

"Did you try to just wait it out?"

I told him about how careless I was in an unsteady spill. I told him about Garland, but only briefly. And he listened patiently through it all.

"Sorry about your friend." He said with sincerity. "The evacuations were crazy and I really think staying put was the safer thing to do, though. I saw a few people get trampled by healthy people and people who turned. They even flipped some cars and pulled down a helicopter."

I was momentarily stunned into silence.

"My name's Nate. What's yours?"

"I'm René." I answered. "René Taylor. Art student."

"Uh, Nate Cormack. I'm a security gaurd. Do you, uh... Do you want to go back to my place, or yours? What might be safer?"

"Yours." I said instantly. "My" house was completely empty and unprotected; right across the street from two of Them.

"You can just follow me then." He said, gesturing awkwardly and hastily toward my car.

We got back into our vehicles and drove off towards his apartment. At the time I didn't know much about him at all but I immediatley trusted him. He was human, certainly, and one of the last ones in Dallas.

**I really really hope that I will have the next chapter up next Saturday and I'll try to make it longer. Thanks for reading my story.**


	3. Chapter 3- Goodnight

** So, first off, I apologize for being almost three weeks late. I want to give excuses so here you go: the first version of chapter three sucked, so I scrapped it too late and started over but didn't know where to go, I keep finding plot holes in it so I get discouraged, and I also share the iPad that I write from with my two sisters. But what the heck, my motto is "I can fix this!" so the plot holes are nothing to worry about. Anyways, let me know how you think I can improve the storyline from here. Anything bugging you about it? Thanks. :)**

** Also, I think I should probably put up a disclaimer or something.**

** DISCLAIMER: This story is based off of an adaptation of Richard Mattheson's I Am Legend. I only own the characters René Taylor, Garland, and Nate Cormack.**

We were two in a million so far. Driving past the wreckage in the streets made me almost feel lucky to have survived. Sure, I had been driving around it for over three hours, but it was pretty bad here in Central Dallas. Cars were wrecked and abandoned all over the place. Several buildings had been burned, as well as a handful of cars. One or more had probably caught fire and exploded in a collision.

As usual, my head was swimming in _how's, why's, _and_ what-ifs,_ but I never fell very far from Nate's bumper. We traversed the city and up into the north side. His apartment was there. Instead of white paneling on the outside, it had grey and brown bricks. The stairwell was enclosed by black iron railing and the grey roof was several shades darker than mine. Nonetheless, I felt like I was visiting Garland's grave.

Nate parked his truck in front of building A and stalked towards a door on the ground level. He picked the lock, letting us into a plain and somewhat messy living room. He shrugged and sighed.

"Yeah, well, I was half expecting company but still didn't do a thing to clean up. You don't mind, do you?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Me neither." He replied. He put his rifle on the couch and began clearing off the rest of it. It was littered with throw pillows and disposable dishes. "You can have my bed or the couch. It doesn't matter to me."

I just stood by the front door and watched, considering his hospitality. Although, under the circumstances, it was the least he could do. There was no telling how many people were left. And how many people had changed like Garland and our neighbors.

He spent the day reading a book that he pulled from between a couch cushion and the arm rest. I stood by the window staring at the adjacent building's brick wall and the grass until my legs got stiff. I sat on the other end of the couch reading another one of his books: _Seize the Night_, by Dean Koontz. It was just a black hard-cover with no synopsis, but I took a chance on it and read almost two-thirds of it before bed.

The entire day had been quiet. So was dinner, which was just a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The power was out, so there was no TV, no lights (except for what came from the tea candles and window), no refrigerator, and no microwave. The refrigerator was just cool enough to keep a few things from going bad though because Nate had packed all of the ice from the freezer into it.

He shared a jar of caramel ice cream topping and some apples for dessert, and then we tried to, very quietly, go to sleep. Nate went into his room to get something before handing it over to me but by the time he got back I had already arranged the throw pillows for sleep and taken my shoes off. I was sitting on the couch kind of like a territorial meerkat.

"I'll take the couch," I said, "so all I need is a blanket."

"You can have the bed. You'll pro'bly be more comfortable there."

"Well, I'd feel like I was taking it from you, and I'm comfortable here." I replied.

"No, no, I mean that you can have it. Like, I'm giving it to you."

I just shook my head. "Blanket please."

He rolled his eyes and walked back to his room, muttering something about being stubborn and not really comfortable. Seconds later, he tossed a Kelly green blanket with felty edges at me. "Here you go. Goodnight."

"Goodnight." I said quickly. That one word brought what is best described as nostalgia by the boat loads. He turned away and closed the door. I blew out the candles on the coffee table. The curtains and blinds were closed tightly against the approaching night. But I laid awake and thought about that word: _goodnight_.

The sound of infected survivors reverberated throughout the apartment all night. I slept fitfully, and only for an hour or two at a time. I tried to relive the good times in my head while staring blankly at the large, black shape of a stranger's rifle laying beside me. In the morning, neither of us said anything about it, but both of us knew that the night had been terrible. It wasn't unlike many of the past eleven nights.

I asked Nate if he knew why the infected people didn't come out during the day.

"You don't know?" He asked dubiously.

"No... That's kind of why I asked."

He huffed in disbelief. "They're allergic to sunlight or something. It burns them. Kind of like a vampire, but they don't explode or burst into flames."

"Oh. I saw two of them already, up close." Garland's snarling, angry face appeared and my throat clenched tightly. "They were inside a dark house... eating someone."

"Where?"

"Right across from my house."

"Like, just on the other side of the street?" He asked.

"Yeah. I stayed there for a few days... Uhm..." I caught myself but he didn't seem to care. "I stayed there and they just looted the houses around mine."

"How are you even alive?" He asked, but he wasn't asking me. It was more to himself. "They don't loot, they kill people. You know how aggressive the virus makes them, don't you?"

I nodded and settled into my chair self-consciously. I felt like I should know much more about them now.

"It clouds their heads. They don't think like people; they eat people." He fell silent. After a while he added, "You're lucky to be alive, considering how many there are out there."

"I know." A pause. "I heard dogs barking around the neighborhood but they just stopped on the second or third day."

He nodded soberly. "Same here. They're probably dead now, too. Anything that's moving annoys them. And looks pretty tasty, on second thought."

After breakfast we went out to look for survivors together. I drove my car, and he drove his truck. On the way past a Walmart, we saw a car driving right up to the front door near the market side. We high-tailed it in and ran up to the door but our hopes fell soon enough. It was dark, even with the skylights; the silence was deafening.

As a beam of light suddenly swung through the massive structure, Nate said, "Wait here."

I didn't have time to protest. He just left while swinging his rifle into place at his shoulder and clicking on the flashlight at the end. I pranced nervously in place then went to the car. Cupping my hands over the back window, I looked inside and saw an empty child seat. My heart fluttered violently; children are my weakness.

Soon, two gunshots rang out from inside and I ducked in without hesitation. I had no flashlight, but a kid might've been in there. Maybe the kid was already dead and the parents were the only ones left. Maybe only one parent was alive, with or without a kid, but Nate and Darkseekers were in there too.

Three more shots followed and I found myself under a two-hundred and some odd pound man. He had no hair, despite looking like he was only in his upper twenties. His skin was baby pink and greying in some places. His warm, humid breath was blasting onto my face but suddenly his skin began quietly sizzling when a flashlight shone on him. A bullet shoved his head away, splattering blood out the other side.

"Run!" Nate shouted.

He pulled me to my feet and pretty much just dragged me into the light. He had been splattered with blood as well. He was panting and hyper.

"What about the others?" I asked.

"They're gone." He said. "The Darkseekers jumped them first. I tried to get a good shot, but they were just too fast."

We just walked away without a word or a glance back. I wanted to mention the child seat but he looked pretty wore out already and disappointed in himself. We just drove away and continued the search, putting one incident of many behind us.


	4. Chapter 4- Moving Again

We drove around for several hours. Nate shot any Darkseekers he saw on the way. At about three or four in the afternoon we had to get out of our vehicles and walk through a particularly congested street. The stench of death was everywhere. People who had died of the virus while scrambling to get out were scattered all over the place; in cars, on the side walks, and tossed onto barricades.

Decomposition acted with surprising speed. From the book I read the night before, Seize the Night, I had learned that a body could become a skeleton in two weeks under the right conditions, but I had a hard time believing it. The scene gave me more than enough proof. I saw dozens of bodies. However, some of them looked like they had been eaten on.

"Do you think animals could get it?" I asked tentatively.

Nate, walking cautiously up ahead, shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe." His next statement was startlingly grim; something I wouldn't have ever expected to hear. "Look at the teeth marks on the bones. You can tell pretty easy which ones are human and which ones are animal. I guess even most dogs on the loose now wouldn't want to eat a person."

My heart clenched and I sighed painfully. _Why did this happen? _I cursed quietly to myself.

"Hello?" Nate yelled out. He startled me, but I stopped to listen. "Hello?" He tried again.

On second thought, he fired a shot straight up into the air. His rifle was loud. After the incident in Walmart, my ears rang for about twenty minutes, or even half an hour. Still, nothing but the birds answered. Our hope dwindled as we walked on through the unceremonious graveyard.

When the answering shot came to me, I thought my ears were just starting to ring again. It takes a couple minutes to start sometimes, but the sound was fleeting enough be identified as a distant gunshot.

"Come on!" Nate said. He broke into a run through the cars, then started sliding over the hoods.

I was not far behind. Another shot called to us and Nate answered. Neither of us were worried about ammo. All the stores were open to us and he had surplus. We met two men and a teenage girl on foot roughly two blocks away.

The girl was about fifteen. She had short, curly blonde hair and blue-grey eyes. She was carrying a black backpack, lumpy and completely stuffed. It looked too big for her, like the brown jacket she was wearing.

The two men were in their late twenties, probably. They looked kind of similar in some ways. One had dark blonde hair and the other had light brown hair. Each had unbelievably dark brown eyes, though.

One of the two men strode up to meet Nate and immediately went to shake hands.

"Trevor Yates," he introduced happily. "This is my brother, Kyle. That's Samantha."

Nate nodded with a little grin of relief stuck to his face. "I'm Nate." He shook hands.

Before he could introduce me, I introduced myself.

"I'm surprised that I didn't hear you before. That's a nice gun." Trevor said.

"Well, yeah." Nate replied. "This one is actually my dad's. We collected them."

Samantha skirted around Nate and her companions with no other possible intent but one. She practically had the whole conversation in her mouth already. "You're really bloody."

I suddenly remembered just how much I had gotten on me and looked down. It had dried into varying shades of brown and rust. She got no answer but a nod.

"Right..." She sighed, then laughed. It sounded kind of like a gentle bark. "I- I can't believe this is happening."

I discreetly glanced over at her jacket out of curiosity. It was way too big and very heavy looking. It was only about sixty degrees out. It's not that the jacket was puffy, but it was just made of very stout material and well insulated. The name _Brooke_ was stitched in red cursive on the left shoulder.

She glanced up at me with perfectly imperfect timing. She glanced down at the tag as I looked away. "It's my brother's. He worked on AC units and heaters." She said in a much more subdued tone.

"Anyways," she began again, "my name is Samantha, but you already know that. Cheers to formal introduction!"

I nodded, finally grinning a little bit. "And you already know that I'm René."

"I like that name. How old are you?" She asked.

"Um, twenty-five. Why?"

"I wrote in the school newspaper. You in college?"

I nodded again. "Digital art. Sculpting game characters, rigging them, that kind of stuff."

"Woah." She stared at me for a moment, eyes wide. Then, "Oh my gosh! That's so cool! Where were you going? What kind of degree were you going for? Bachelors? Associates?" And so goes the interview.

After a few minutes, Nate said that we were going to go back to our vehicles and meet in that same place. We said brief goodbyes and split up, but as I was walking away, I couldn't stop thinking about how they might disappear behind my back.

They didn't. When we met up again, Samantha opted for riding in my car. She said that she wanted to talk to another girl again. Nate took charge of the caravan/convoy and continued the search. Finding each other was a huge confidence booster for everyone.

Samantha and I continued to talk about my work in college, and eventually just gaming in general. As it turns out, she was a seasoned gamer herself. At four O'clock, Nate parked his truck and rolled out a plan. It wouldn't be dark for another three hours or so, but moving from one house to another might take some time. Before a debate could even start on who's place to go to, Samantha, Kyle, and Trevor invited us to their place. They had a two story house, which happens to be significantly bigger than Nate's apartment.

After a fairly short drive, we came to a neighborhood of mini-castles. My first thought was _oh... my... gosh. I love these!_ And really I did always like those big houses in pristine, usually out of the way, locales. They always had nice architecture and lots of space inside. I had looked forward to getting a degree and making a life for myself that included one of these.

Our convoy parked outside of a parrot grey house with lapis lazuli blue shutters. It had a concrete walkway and bushes planted in red wood chips under the front windows; it looked like the rest of them until I looked up and saw the nose of a rifle poking out from one of the windows.

"I guess you guys can just head inside and check the place out first. Then we'll help you move in." Kyle said, getting out of his car and onto the driveway.

I walked around my car and looked up at the house. My eyes swept over our group of people, undecidedly fortunate or unfortunate. I glanced up and down the block of empty houses. This was an earth-shaking disaster. Things would be different from now on, and I knew that, so I stood in the strangers' front yard and bolstered my courage. We had to live through this.

** I did the math on this and found out that if one percent of the population of the world is immune, that means that roughly ten thousand people should be immune in the Dallas area, which covers 385 square miles and holds over one million people. There would be ninety thousand Darkseekers (nine percent of the infected turn into them). So, by now, most of the immune people have been eaten, evacuated, or been killed during the evacuation in a car accident, or a helicopter crash or something like that. A lot of the Darkseekers might have been shot or killed in some other way, too. The number could be different, but René is very lucky to have survived, like everyone else.**


	5. Chapter Five- Thermopylae

** I won't be able to post a chapter every Saturday (obviously :p) but I will post a new chapter when I can. This story seems to be getting darker and darker in my head, but I'll try to keep it from depressing anyone who reads it because it's really just supposed to be a story about the friggin' apocalypse that is as accurate as possible (but I don't think that's going as well as I'd hoped). But anyways, here's chapter five.**

The rest of our daylight hours were spent moving some of mine and Nate's things into the Yates' house. Given the reasons why I moved, there was no reason to be ashamed for having moved into an empty house all by myself with nothing but a few things in a backpack. Maybe, putting it that way, there was the possibility that someone might not understand, but still, I didn't have to go back to my old apartment to save face. Nate insisted that I be accompanied, probably because I'd already told him about what happened, so everyone followed me there. My legs were shaking as I got out of the car. I didn't want anyone to see me like that, or to come inside, or, for some odd reason, to even know whom I had lost.

I just didn't want the attention. I had become extremely self-conscious and defensive in less than an hour. I was thinking about what had to be done while Nate packed his stuff up into his truck, some of which were his clothes, guns and cleaning supplies, books, contributions to the food supply, and some keep-sakes. In my mind, Garland's body was just like the ones in the traffic jam now and I just dreaded coming back and seeing her.

The car door slammed behind me but barely even registered in my mind. I didn't even process it and thus forgot it as I jogged away. Did I shut the door? I glanced nervously behind me, then shook it off, thoughts racing. The magnitude of what I was doing was pressing down on me like a wrecking ball. Nate was getting out of his truck, rifle ready. Second floor, four doors down on the right.

I opened the door and the weather stripping hissed briefly. It fell silent though as a little bit of death drifted by. It crawled out the door to meet me like a sadistic ghost. But I reminded myself that Garland was not sadistic. Maybe the thing that took over her body was, but not Garland.

Nate's shoes smacked the concrete stairs as I ducked inside. The memories were overwhelming but I had already quietly resolved to soldier through and had thrown myself deep inside before I could make any conscious decisions. Our bedroom was right there. The stench was awful.

"René?" Nate asked from behind me. The concern in his voice nearly broke me right there. "You weren't living here when you found me, right?"

I shook my head and started for the doorknob. Seconds later I was out of the hallway and into the living room, finding personal things, but now I didn't want them because I just didn't think that it was worth coming here for them. Light began to refract off of the tears in my eyes, making my vision light and hazy.

"Do you really need anything from in there?" Nate asked.

Before he even finished his sentence I was shaking my head vigorously while making a show of being busy folding a quilt. I wanted to add, "No, I'm fine," but my throat had already constricted too tightly to speak.

Emotional displays had always been infuriatingly frustrating to me. It didn't help at all that my throat was painfully tight or that my eyes were drowning, and I had no control over it what-so-ever. I probably hated emotional displays because of the things that had caused them too, without even realizing.

I heard him walk quietly -respectfully- down the hall to the bathroom where he began taking things that I would need. Later he came back and listed the things that came in twos and asked which ones were mine. Again, the consideration he had for me was heart-breaking.

"I'll get it." I managed to say. The whole time he was in there I was steeling myself against the awful effects of my emotional roller coaster. It took no time at all to get the things Nate and I had gathered into my car. He didn't say much about it and the two of us somehow managed to look normal enough to not call any attention to ourselves. I was glad that Nate was the only one who came inside.

"That's it?" Trevor asked, leaning out of his car window.

I walked to the driver's side of my car and called back "yeah", while silently adding "that's all I can take". I was glad that it was over. That was the last time I went to my apartment, for sure, and hopefully the last time that wound would be opened. In the back of my car I had the quilt, some items from the bathroom, a half-full bucket of clay and carving utensils, a sketchbook, coffee, little cups of creamer, coffee mugs, and a few other things, all in a box. None of it was Garland's.

We drove up to the Yates' house again at five thirty or five forty-five, something like that. Daylight was fading, but the weather was no indicator of the season, as usual. It was just another mild Texas December. We hurriedly brought our things into the house. There were two bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs, so only one person would get their own room. I couldn't decide for myself who had the most right to it, so I left that decision to the others. Before I left everyone standing half in the kitchen and half in the living room I pitched out "I don't care who I stay with".

As the last bit of sunlight faded, the shutters and blinds were closed and the curtains were drawn shut, leaving us in the dim glow of a few candles. Each person carried a candle to his or her room and then put it out. I laid on a pallet of blankets beside Samantha's bed, staring up at the black ceiling. The yells of infected survivors sounded more like roars. They sounded inhuman, but still recognizable, and that's what made them so terrifying.

Outside, they roved the suburban development in packs. They fought amongst themselves and searched the neighbor's house. Sam and I were on the second floor in the room with a window right beside the other house. We heard glass and wood breaking as they searched for food. Suddenly, a window broke on the adjacent wall of the neighbor's house and I heard a heavy thud and scratching. There was a commotion in the other house.

Sam sat bolt upright and turned to me in the darkness. "René?" She whispered. I barely heard her. "Is it on our house?"

I heard another thud and knew that it had fallen off and hit the ground two stories below. I felt a little bit of relief before another one jumped from the other house and smashed through the window on our's. Apparently, the other one had pried the shutters open. Sam got out of bed and ran on cat-like feet across the room and out the door. I was quick to follow. The room they were in was just an office, so they wouldn't stay there long.

Sam rushed into Nate and Kyle's room to wake them up but Nate was already loading his rifle. He pushed past us while hissing, "Get downstairs and wake up Trevor."

Sam and I groped our way down the stairs and barged into his room. "Trevor!" Sam cried. She didn't care for stealth anymore. The infected survivors were screaming in pain over gunshots now. Trevor's head appeared from under his blanket with a look of alarm.

"Get your gun! They got inside!" Sam said.

He didn't hesitate as he leapt out of bed and snatched his Glock 19 off of his nightstand. "How many?" He asked.

Sam and I shared a look. "I don't know." I said. "They were going through the neighbor's house and jumped across from the second story window."

"We can use that like a funnel, keep them at bay. Stay here." He ran past us and bolted up the stairs.

Sam whimpered and made a sound that was like a suppressed sob. I then decided that we should stay busy to keep our heads.

"Let's just start packing." I said. "We might not be able to keep the house, but we can keep what we'll need if we start now."

Her head bobbed in the darkness and we left. Sam went back to get Trevor's duffel bag while I ran upstairs to get Nate's and Kyle's, directly against Trevor's order. Running past the office, I saw the Infected leaping two at a time through the opposite window, clambering over each other. They were desperate to get to us. On the way back downstairs Sam ran past me to get ours. We loaded the bags with essentials and then I took Kyle's SIG, that was kept in the living room, with me to put them in the cars. Outside, the world was still as it listened to the fight.

"Sam!" Trevor yelled downstairs, when I got back inside. "Get ready to leave! I'll tell you when."

"We're already packing." She called back, brushing off the implication that we would leave with or without them.

With the necessary items packed, Sam and I started ferrying out creature comforts, but then a huge shadow sprung over my car and tackled me to the ground. Sam screamed. I punched it in the face to keep it from biting into my cheek and Sam kicked it right in the temple, toppling it over and stunning it. We helped each other to the house, falling inside only a few paces ahead of it.

Nate, Kyle and Trevor were running down the stairs, grabbing ammunition and keys on the way when we turned around.

"Get in the truck!" Nate barked.

"They're at the front door!" I protested. The loud crack of a bullet being chambered told me he was ready.

We charged out the door. Nate and the guys were apparently in no mood for this. All three were blasting out gunfire at the opposition in a storm. Nate pulled me toward his truck, while Trevor took Sam to his car and Kyle started mine.

For a while, they chased us down the road, some climbing onto our vehicles, but we shook them off and drove toward the outskirts of the city. The Dallas/Fort Worth area is roughly eighty miles across. You can drive for eighty miles down the length of it and only see buildings and pavement. I couldn't see much of it, because the streetlights were out, but I felt the void left by six million people and the presence of those... things. In every shadow I saw them, even if there wasn't really anything there. We drove on and on through the darkness, far past the city limits. We drove for hours until we passed through a small town and down a road that wound through Texas brush country. I still couldn't see much of it, but we came to a thin stretched neighborhood on miles and miles of land that just felt safe, so we parked outside of a house there and went inside.

I retrieved some candles and a lighter from my duffel bag to assess the damage. I wasn't expecting anyone to be in the house because there was no car outside when we arrived. By candlelight we checked each other for injuries. At first we all just seemed badly shaken, but then Nate called our attention to Kyle's left wrist. Kyle had been alone in my car until now, and quiet. The light of several tea candles illuminated a wide gash in his wrist. He stared down at the blood, still dripping, and didn't say a word.

"You'll be okay." Trevor said. "We're all immune to it. You won't get infected now."


End file.
